


tethered

by owlinaminor



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Fix-It, M/M, Tom Blake Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25510537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: If Tom has taught Will one thing, it is belief.
Relationships: Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	tethered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Milothatches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milothatches/gifts).



> so wally did [this adaptation of the 1917 script](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rA4RN8gg6OL0ZCwj8rpdwEUPPQvw7C-3rvcHdyl3EAc/edit), which is basically like what if will and tom had been in a secret relationship already and the events of the movie are _that much more tragic,_ and we did a table read of the adapted script last weekend and everyone cried, so i was like, what if will and tom had been in a secret relationship but _fuck it, tom didn't die, actually._
> 
> here you go script reading crew, hope this helps <3

> _Smith heads back towards the farmhouse. Schofield doesn’t move. He runs a hand through Blake's curls._
> 
> _Tethered._

The sun shines on Tom Blake. It always does. It shone when they first met: early October, a brilliant day that hangs in Will’s memory warm as gentle as the wind whispering through the grass.

“I’m still hungry,” Tom had said, stretched out on the patchy dirt outside the mess tent, and he sighed and pushed himself to his feet, farm-boy muscles stretching and rippling with the movement. “I’m going to go get seconds. Want anything?”

Will stared at him, tried to explain that the mess officers don’t allow seconds, and anyway they had probably run out of everything.

Blake shrugged, said he would go ask nicely. And lo, he returned five minutes later, balancing two extra rolls and a bowl half-full of stew. He handed one of the rolls to Will and popped back down, smirking up at the sky as though this was all expected, all natural, the bounty of the earth all laid out for him.

The sun shines on Tom Blake: even when he bleeds, it is brilliant.

The red ripples out, as though draped there with a delicate paintbrush, sketched first and then colored with a pigment made from crushed wildflowers, and Will has the strangest sensation that if he pushed his hand into the blood and then brought it to his mouth, it would taste sweet, sweet with tart at the edges like the fruit of those cherry trees they passed, not yet in bloom.

Will read once that, in Japanese art, cherry blossoms symbolize young samurai: boys going to their deaths with smiles on their faces, cut off as the petals fall from the branch in spring. Will sees Tom run his fingers across such petals, his hands red and calloused—ten minutes ago, a lifetime ago. _Was planning to bring you with on leave,_ he said. And he will, he will—Tom is no samurai. He’s young, sure, and brave, but how can you fall to the earth when the earth is part of you, how—

_How could you leave, when we have so much more to say?_

Will takes Tom’s hand in his, and looks up at the sky—wide, brilliant, blue. Illuminated by the sun.

“Help,” he cries. With all the breath in his lungs and Tom’s lungs, too, heaving out there in Will’s arms. “Help, someone, please. We need a doctor. Please.”

And in between cries, he takes Tom’s face in his hands—red lips, full cheeks, skin going pale, no, no, not pale, Will won’t allow it, he won’t let this be the last time he presses close—Tom saved his life, right, hauled Will out of the dirt and stone like a fairytale knight scaling the castle, and Tom may be no hero but he has magic like one, he must have magic left for himself.

If Tom has taught Will one thing, it is belief. He whispered it into the wind, the night sky, the space between their bodies as they lay together somewhere beyond the trenches: the war will end. The war will end, and we will live.

 _We will live. We have to._ Will believes this with his hands, pressing bandages over the wound in Tom’s side, and he believes it with his voice, calling out. Someone will hear him, someone must. He leans forward, in a moment between cries, to take a breath—finds Tom, eyes glassy and unfocused, looking back at him. His lips are pouted, like he wants to say something, and he is still breathing. And he will keep breathing. He will keep breathing.

They are sitting like this, when the Captain finds them. Two figures in a pool of blood, rifles abandoned, foreheads pressed together.

The sun shines, too, when Will leaves him.

It seems unfair, almost: all these details illuminated. The curve of Tom’s cheek, the delicate swell of his nose, the dip of his chin. His brow, sticky with sweat, and his curls, matted above. He shines in the sunlight, even pale and breathing shallow, even strapped to a gurney in the back of a medical truck, headed east. Will goes as far as the aid post. Will goes—a mile towards Écoust, then two out of his way, and that’s stupid, isn’t it, to go out of his way, but that’s another thing Tom taught him—being stupid.

As Will feels the wheels start to slow, he shifts: leans over Tom. Runs shaking fingers through Tom’s curls.

“Hey,” he says. “We’re nearly there.”

Tom stirs: blinks his eyes open, long lashes whispering out, and then his lips part as he looks up at Will. He looks at Will like this is the first time, all wide-open devotion, like Will is going to save the world.

“I love you,” he says.

Will presses his face into the crook of Tom’s neck, warm and sweet, and whispers it back.

He helps the orderlies lift Tom out of the truck. He takes the letter, he recites the way. And he is gone.

_I love you,_ Tom said, but it wasn’t enough. The words echo in Will’s head, each iteration growing further away, hollowing out, as though shouted from across a great canyon. Will needs to hear it again. Tom needs to say it again. Today, tomorrow, every day for the rest of their lives.

The mission goes easily enough, after that. Will keeps moving, the sun keeps shining. He narrates each step in his head, practicing how he will tell the story to Tom after.

_Hitched a ride back towards Écoust, Tom. We were halfway there when the truck’s wheels got stuck in the mud. I had to get everyone out, get ‘em lifting—you know how you say I’m never loud enough to get people to listen to commands? Well, I was, this time. I screamed like there was an army of ghosts behind me, and we lifted that truck._

_There was a sniper in the lockhouse, Tom. Near the bridge, going over to the town. He fired three shots at me, then stopped—I think he ran out of bullets. I climbed the stairs and found him slumped at the top, bleeding out, like—like you—like you didn’t. I put him out of his misery._

_I found a woman hidden in a secret bunker, Tom. Or maybe I didn’t find her, maybe she found me. She was lovely in the candlelight, and she spoke enough English or I spoke enough French that she told me the way to Croisilles Wood. I know, you told me the way already, but it was harder in the dark, with Hun shooting whenever I started to run. She had a baby in a drawer, a little girl who started to cry when I held her and stopped when I gave her milk. I wish you’d been there, Tom. You would have known what to say, to give them both hope._

_I jumped in the river, Tom. The Hun were chasing, and day was about to break, and I’d dropped my gun—I had no other way out. It was cold, in the river. I couldn’t breathe. The current pulled me like I was nothing. But still, I was so heavy, like I had you and the woman with her baby and the entire 2 nd Devons on my back. I wanted to sink, but I thought of you, of you, and I couldn’t let go._

_I don’t know how to tell you this, Tom. How to tell you, that you’ve tethered me. I see cherry blossoms, and I think of you. I hear laughter, or I hear music, and I think of you. I see the sun, the sky, and I think of you. It’s all your world, the one you’ve made for us, and I’m just trying to keep believing._

Joseph Blake looks just as Tom said he would, standing beneath the morning sun. _Just like me, a little older._ Broad shoulders, soft features, and eyes that widen when he sees Will, as though he’s taking in the whole world at once.

“Tom’s here? Where is he?” he says. And he sounds so certain that Will almost turns—expecting to hear footsteps, to see that familiar smile, to feel Tom’s arms around him, or one arm around him and one around Joe, maybe, pulling them both closer.

Will shakes his had, to clear it of phantoms.

“He’s at an aid post, near Écoust,” he says.

Joe’s eyes narrow—looking at Will through a rifle’s sights. “You’re certain?”

Will nods. “I went there with him. He was—he was stabbed, but—” Will feels it, in his throat, as his voice breaks. “—he’ll be alright. I know it.”

Will puts up a hand to wipe at his eyes, tries to pretend it’s only dust, and when he returns Joe is watching him—a kinder expression this time, one that reminds Will of Tom when he insists Will get some rest.

“You’re Schofield, right?” Joe says. “Tom’s written about you, in his letters.”

“Yes. Lance Corporal Will Schofield, at your service, sir.” Will puts his hand out to shake, tries to quiet his thousand questions— _Tom mentioned me? When? What did he say? What did he tell you about us?_

Will swallows it down. He will ask Tom—ask him everything—when he returns.

Joe shakes his hand—his palm is rough, calloused, like his brother’s—and points him to the medical tent, the mess tent, the bunks.

It’s easy enough, to have his wounds tended to— _they cleaned the back of my head, Tom, where I knocked it against a rock in the river, said I shouldn’t do any reading for the next two weeks—_ to get something to eat— _their stew’s not as good as ours, Tom, too watery, not enough salt—_ and to find a tree to lie against— _just a few minutes, Tom, just a few, and then I’ll be on my way._

He dreams of Tom. Easy enough.

He sees the sunlight, first, and then he’s floating: reaching up through layers and layers of still water to emerge on his back, staring up at the sky. He is floating, and there is music in the distance, a plaintive melody just out of reach like the song he heard in the woods, and he turns his head and Tom is beside him. Tom is all warmth—his eyes, his skin pink from the sun, his hand as he reaches for Will.

They were in a river, the first time Will kissed him. A quiet cove, somewhere far behind the trenches—could’ve been a five-minute walk or an hour, for all Will knew as he followed Tom, his head nodding over his shoulders. The sky was clear, and so was the water, as though Tom had asked it specifically to play nice.

Will waded in, washed his hair and limbs, and when he came up for air Tom was watching him. Tom was—all wide eyes, open mouth, his wet curls pushed back so there was nothing hiding that expression. His expression, for—for campfires after a long march, for letters from home, but something more awake than that, pink at the edges. Something—

“Will,” Tom said. His voice echoed across the water, ripples reaching out. He had never called Will by his first name before.

“Tom,” Will said. The name felt strange on his lips—strong _t,_ warm _m_ —but it tasted sweet, on the back of his tongue.

“Please,” Tom said. And how could Will refuse him?

Will leaves the 2nd Devons at daybreak the next morning.

The sun shines as he runs: the weight sits on his shoulders, heavier than a ghost but lighter than a kit and rifle. The weight sits, like Tom is on his back, whispering in his ear: _keep going, I’ve got you, don’t let go._

The sun is just passing her crest, golden in the sky, when Will gets home.

**Author's Note:**

> do not ask me how the timeline works in this fic because i have no fucking idea.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


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